


Scenes from a Hat

by GreyBauer



Category: Original Work
Genre: Childhood, Childhood Memories, Divorce, Drama, Eating Disorders, Experimenting with Form, Family Dynamics, Father-Daughter Relationship, Marriage, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Religion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-15
Updated: 2015-07-15
Packaged: 2018-04-09 13:18:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4350290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GreyBauer/pseuds/GreyBauer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Her mother stops before the word gets out, looks from side to side, confiscates her daughter’s small cup of lemonade and downs it like a shot. </p><p>When she turns her daughter around to straighten the bow at the back of her dress again, she spends an extra moment before she whispers, “They’re getting a divorce, sweetie. Don’t talk about it, ok?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scenes from a Hat

I. Extremely Open and Incredibly Close

The arms on the chairs make crowding at the pushed-together conference tables very difficult. People sit at corners. Usually one or two are along the white walls. She has to crane her neck around to look at some of the critiquers in the circle and there is no space to walk when break is called. They shuffle slowly around each other to exit through the one door.

All seventeen occupants stare at the east end of the table. The professor pushes back hair falling into her face and leans forward on her elbows again, palms like blades. She stares at the story in front of her. “What I really want to see,” she says, nodding slightly, “is the mother and father standing in the kitchen, just having a conversation. I’m so interested in their dynamic.”

There is a pause. Three quarters of the way down the table, the writer wonders what her  parents could talk about that would advance the story.

“I don’t care what they talk about,” the professor says.

She is not comfortable with that sort of artistic freedom.

 

* * *

 

II. Phrasing

She wants to submit the workshopped piece to a writing contest. The only contest she knows about is a fiction contest through the university, which is not troubling because her workshop said the story troubled genre. It relates events she doesn’t understand, and reads a lot like fiction. It’s good. It might win.

It needs that conversation.

She sits with it. She stares at it. She rewatches Alien, and then Prometheus, and then Signs and The Fourth Kind. She pets her roommate’s cat and stares at the two lines she’d retyped and retyped, trying to get at the conversations she heard in her childhood. She drinks coffee, gets too antsy, goes to the gym.

Three miles into her air-conditioned treadmill run, the burning in her calves and thighs has sharpened her memory enough.

Her parents have never stood in the kitchen having a conversation. There is no topic for her professor not to care about.

* * *

 

III. Godwilling

She is nine when her mother approaches her with a look that says delicate information is about to be conveyed. She is by the donut trays at after-service fellowship one Sunday and her mother smiles at her, circles her, straightens the bow on the back of her dress, then tugs her over to the trashcan around the corner from the fellowship patio, where they will not be overheard.

“Hey sweetie,” her mother says, bending at the waist to bring her face almost below her daughter’s. “Mikey Parks is in your Sunday school class, right?”

He is.

“Can you be especially kind to him for the next little while? His parents are -- ah, his parents are having trouble. They’re getting --”

Her mother stops before the word gets out, looks from side to side, confiscates her daughter’s small cup of lemonade and downs it like a shot.

When she turns her daughter around to straighten the bow at the back of her dress again, she spends an extra moment before she whispers, “They’re getting a divorce, sweetie. Don’t talk about it, ok?”

Then her mother tugs her back to the fellowship patio, smiling for the people she sees there, and scoots her daughter off in the opposite direction to find her father and bring him to Bible Study. “He’s got to be accountable for something eventually, godwilling,” her mother says.

She finds her father, stands by his side, says nothing. She doesn’t think she’s ever heard the word divorce before, but she knows what it means. She ignores Mikey Parks with slightly more devotion than usual.

 

* * *

 

IV. Earthquakes and Freeway Collapses

Years and years later, her father comes to her room to tell her to ask her mother if she’d like to go out for burgers, then goes back downstairs and down the hall to his bedroom. When she stands in the kitchen and asks her mother, her mother smiles at her and tells her to tell her father that, unlike some people, she has a business to run.

She does not convey this message to her father. They split a large burger, her father takes away her soda before she can get a refill and fills it with water instead, and they both leave hungry. Her father pays with a credit card, not his heavily-preferred cash, and she does not convey that to her mother.

In the car on the way back home two hours later, her father takes the tallest interchange in a tangle of four freeways, which leads them in the opposite direction of their neighborhood. He says out of nowhere, “Has your mother told you she isn’t my first wife?”

Her mother has not told her.

“I was married to Maryanne for seven years. We got divorced.”

She is looking over the edge of the overpass at the ground, feeling the curve and tilt of the road on its 60 foot pillars, watching three other freeways curl below them. Her grip on the door tightens.

“People grow apart, Busteress,” he says after a silence. “They stop making each other happy for a lot of different reasons. They let go to try somewhere else because the grass looks greener. And maybe it is, but maybe it’s not.”

The curve tightens.

“I know you used to ask your mother if we were going to get a divorce when you were younger. But we’re not. I’m committed to that. I’m committed to her.”

He looks over at her, and she sees the lines in his skin, the dark circles around his eyes, the weathering on his cheeks for maybe the first time.

“The grass isn’t greener,” he says. “It’s just different.”

She hadn’t thought about her father’s life before. Divorce was a word too taboo for church, not a casual question from a father on a trip home.

 

* * *

 

V. La Herencia

Property taxes are due, and too many of her mother’s nineteen rental properties are vacant to generate the $53,000 she needs in the next five days. There have been more than four phone calls to the accountant and different banks in the last hour. Each time the phone is set down, the impact grows progressively louder.

Her mother doesn’t knock when she delivers a turkey sandwich to her daughter’s room, and her daughter makes the mistake of leaving her Spanish book within eyeshot.

“-- am I supposed to rent to them if they can’t speak the frickin’ language,” her mother continues, smacks her forehead and rests it in her hands. “If I say $650 a month for a studio, it means seis-frickin-whatever a month for the studio!”

Her daughter breathes deeply, looks at the door. “Mom--”

“And your father! He wants me to rent to whoever walks in, whether they’ve got a social security number or not. I’m the one who pays for it if they trash the place, and if they bring the gangs in --”

On the floor below, through her walls and half the house, she hears the front door open and shut behind her father.  

Her mother looks toward the sound, and her face is frightening. It takes her a moment to smooth the lines in her skin, unclench her jaw. She smiles. “Can I get you to translate whatever it is they put down on their applications later? After taxes. It’ll be good practice for you.”

Her daughter wonders if she should have studied French or Sign instead. She wonders if she should stop calling her paternal grandmother abuelita. She wonders if her mother knows her father’s name was almost Pablo, that he’s the one who helps her with her Spanish homework at the bookstore on Wednesdays, not a tutor.

Her mother shuffles out, house shoes soft on the carpet and holding her fluffy pink robe shut at the top of her neck. She shuts the door only to open it again, taking her daughter’s half-finished bowl of kettle corn away and saying, “The confirmation email for your SAT came through. Tell your father to stop using his credit card.”

She leaves the door open when she wanders down the stairs, and her daughter can hear her crunching kettle corn all the way down.

 

* * *

 

VI. Four Walls and a Roof

She enrolls in University.

\--Her mother tells her about the prophecies in Revelation, how they predict that the antichrist will have a similar agenda to the Democratic party.

\--Her father explains in detail how the economic restrictions placed on the American public by Obamacare will lead to the downfall of the freemarkets.

She moves into the dorms.

\---Her mother complains about how hot it is, but laughs with FOX’s commentary on climate change.

\---Her father reminds her of her Statistics training, and how easy it is to fake data, environmental or otherwise.

In fall quarter, one of her dorm mates keeps the light on until three in the morning, studying.

\----Her mother tells her that she’ll be more motivated and have fewer panic attacks if she gets a job -- it worked when her mother was in community college, she paid tuition in full by herself.

\----Her father tells her that she’s over eighteen and University is expensive -- he worked three jobs to put himself and his first wife through college, she needs to start looking.

In winter quarter, her other dorm mate has a breakdown, skips all her finals, and leaves for good three days into spring quarter.

\-----“I’ve been through my fair share of hard times too, sweetie,” her mother says. “You just need to be positive.”

\-----“I’ve been through my fair share of hard times too, Busteress,” her father says. “You’ve just gotta keep your chin up and plow on through.”

She starts seeing a therapist, though this one does not have the high ceilings and stained glass windows she remembers from their family’s aborted visits in her childhood. This therapist’s office is barely big enough for the both of them, much less a couch for her mother and father to stand on either side of.

She doesn’t know if the sessions are effective. She doesn’t tell her parents.

 

* * *

 

VII. Water

She misses a shot off the back wall during a racquetball game with her father more than two years later, and ends up on the floor, leaning her head into the point where the two walls meet.

“Don’t cry about missing a ball, Busteress, it’s ok. A college class can’t teach you everything about a game.”

She’s learned a lot at university, including how to make that shot. It’s not the problem. She’s not sure what the problem is. There are a lot of problems, and eventually they’re going to pour out -- sooner than she wants them to, according to the therapist.

Her father bounces around on his thin legs, her brother’s cast-off cross-trainers squeaking where they rub on the floor beneath his feet. “C’mon, Busteress, up up up. We’ve got six more points before I finally beat you.”

She feels beat. She feels done, in a much larger context than her father thinks. She’s not breathing hard, she runs eight miles a day, but she couldn’t get her legs beneath her if she wanted to. She lets her head drop.

Her father stops bouncing, and the court rings in the barely-moving air. They wait.

“What is it,” her father says.

She thinks about skipped breakfasts and lunches, 900 calorie days.

“Did someone hurt you?” he asks.

They wait.

“Did you hurt yourself?”

She looks up at him, and the muscles in her back untwist. She wonders if her face looks weathered yet. She wonders if her insurance provider can legally give her parents her medical records since she’s still a dependent on their policy.

She doesn’t know what to say, so she just says it.

“I’ve got an eating disorder.”

The air rings and doesn’t move, and they sit there looking at each other until her father looks away.

“That’s not good,” he says.

The court’s still ringing. Her sweat’s starting to cool. Her father’s not taking a deep breath, not moving to speak, just looking at the corner of the back wall that she’s not in.

“Come on,” she says, getting her legs under her again, twirling her racquet in her hand. “Six more points until you beat me. I won’t even tell Mom I let you win.”

Her father looks at her, but she is determined, snatching the ball from him and patting him on the shoulder. She hits shallow practice shots until he’s gotten the message, and the slap of the ball on the court walls tells her that this was never the place, or the time, and that she can’t stay.

Her father beats her. They refill their bottles at the water fountain, drive home without stopping for food. Her mother doesn’t ask about the game or if her daughter’s eaten lunch, but she tells her she’s beautiful in her Sunday best the next day, as she has each Sunday before.

 

* * *

 

VIII. Speaking in Occupied Air

She gets a text from her brother that says her parents fought in their hotel room in Ohio the night before, and that he bought her mother a plane ticket to fly home the next morning. He tells her to talk to them -- he’s the starting pitcher in tomorrow’s game and flew them out for support, not complications.

She gets a phone call from her mother during a layover. Her father waits until batting practice at the stadium that afternoon.

“He doesn’t want to talk about the Rapture,” her

mother says. “He doesn’t believe. He says he can’t

think about it.”

“She can’t talk about anything but the apocalypse,”

her father says. “She can’t be rational. She can’t

look at the problems right in front of us.”

“I asked him to show some concern for our souls.”

“Dad’s always kept us safe, Mom.”

“I asked her to stop talking about it. I said I didn’t

want to fight.”

“Mom stands up for what she believes, Dad.”

“He refuses to believe me. He refuses to believe anything.”

“That’s not what it’s about.”

“She can’t respect me. She can’t respect anyone

but herself.”

“That’s not what it’s about.”

“Why is he so afraid of there being something more?”

“Why’s she so afraid of this being all there is?”

“I don’t think that’s what the fear is.”

“But how would you know?”                                                                                                                                                                          “But how would you know?”

She waits.

“He just sat there. He wouldn’t engage.”

“She just took off. Didn’t tell me where she

was going.”

“Why wouldn’t he want to be with me in the end?”

“Why couldn’t she just stay with me now?”

 

* * *

 

IV. _________

Thanksgiving means a fourteen pound turkey, ten ounces of gravy, two cans of cranberry sauce, two vegetable dishes, two dozen biscuits, ten twice-baked potatoes, thirty-six deviled eggs, three yams, a green-bean casserole, homemade cider, store-bought cider, two kinds of cake and three kinds of pie. It means leaving her classes a day early so she can drive home and be awake enough to cook through the night to finish what her father hadn’t before he went to work. It means a week’s worth of encouraging text messages to her mother about clearing the table, and the floor beneath the table, and the walkways around the table, and maybe even the living room (if she’s really lucky) of the piles of dusty junk that inhabit most of the house.

It is her last Thanksgiving at home. She is graduating from college that year.

She is elbow deep in butter and flour in the kitchen when she hears the shuffling of her mother’s house slippers on the linoleum. Her finger clench in a way that will not be good for the pie crust.

She looks up, tells her mother the kettle’s still warm if she wants some tea before she starts in on the turkey. Her mother heads to the mug cabinet.

“I’m headed to the store,” her father says, leaving his place by the sink. “We need more heavy cream and cranberry sauce.”

They have a full pint of heavy cream in the fridge. Two cans of cranberry sauce are on the table in plain view. The pie filling in the bowl before him looks half done.

“Do you want to come with me?” her father asks her.

She pauses. Looks at her black pajama shorts, covered in flour, at the butter jammed under her fingernails, caught on her cuticles.

“I’ll stay,” she tells him.

She starts back on incorporating the butter. She sees her father’s feet in her periphery for a few seconds. Her mother’s spoon clinks on the side of her mug.

The next thing she hears is the door opening and shutting.

“Thank you for making enough for two,” her mother says.

It’s a ritual, at this point.

Her mother sets to work on the turkey, plucking stray feathers, washing inside and out. She has two pie crusts rolled and in pans, ready for filling, when her mother looks in the refrigerator.

“We have heavy cream in here,” her mother says.

She keeps rolling out dough, making it even, making it circular. Her mother stares into the fridge.

“Did you know we had cream in here?”

She picks up the pie dough, places it in its pan, trims off all but an inch around the edge. “I hadn’t checked.”

She hears the front door open and shut again.

“Oh,” her mother says.

Her mother closes the fridge, turns back to the turkey, takes down spices from the cabinet by the stove. The impacts on the counter get progressively louder.

Her father toes off his shoes at the rack under the stairs, plastic bag with two items in it crinkling, and steps onto the linoleum in socked feet.

“I’m going to take a nap,” she tells her parents.

She passes her mother, passes her father, goes up to her room and shuts the door.

Any conversation they have in the kitchen will not be a conversation. She is tired of filling in the blanks.

 

 


End file.
